Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Unknown Genre: Samples of the Steampunk Genre




 “The balloon of a Phoenix-class airship is better than any view from its cabin windows; half a mile of silk pulled taut across three hundred metal ribs and a hundred gleaming spines is a beautiful thing.  If your mask filter is dirty you get lightheaded and your sight goes reddish, so it looks as though the balloon is falling in love with you.”  (p. 86)  

From: “The Zeppelin Conductors’ Society Annual Gentleman’s Ball” by Geneviere Valentine
Ed. Adams, J. Lightspeed: Year One.  Prime Books 2001.  Print
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“The automatic nanny was the creation of Reginald Dacey, a mathematician born in London in 1861.  Darcy’s original interest was in building a teaching engine … [Caption under a picture] Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny in stand-by mode.  In active mode, the arms meet so that the automatic nanny can rock the baby to sleep with the need of a cradle or even a blanket”. (47, 48)   

From: “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny” by Ted Chiang. 
Ed. Vandermeer, A, and Vandermeer J.  The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiousities.  Harper Voyager 2011.  Print
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“Percy Pysshe Shelly was a poet, before he lead the Luddites in the Time of Troubles,” the Maquess said.  “Know that Percy Shelly lives!  Byron exiled him to the island of St. Helens.  He remains a prisoner there, in the manse of Napoleon the First.  Some say he’s since written whole books of plays and sonnets there.”  (301) 

Gibson W. and Sterling B.  The Difference Engine.  Bantam Books 1991.  Print   
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“The girl made from bronze, the Returned, because she was not a real girl, this artificial girl had a loud irregular  moan in her chest: a broken machine  whine that announced itself in a grinding of gears  It was loud and troublesome to the woman who held her, and every now and then, it stopped, as in death.”  (32) 

From: “Possession” by Ben Peek
Ed.  Vandermeer, A, and Vandermeer, J.  Steampunk III. San Franciso CA.  Tachyon Publications.  2012.  Print.   

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